Tiffany. There is a persistent history of absent fathers in our family, although Tiffany did get a daddy of her own, in the end, because Brenda married this ex-boxer, after all that. Light-heavyweight. Strict Baptist. They live round the corner, Acre Lane. Brenda’s a pillar of the community, now, you’d never think her first fellow was here today and gone tomorrow.
Tiffany. So pretty! I never saw such a pretty baby. ‘Born for the stage,’ I said to Nora. We took her on, ballet and tap, from the age of three. We used to run a little school, in those days, the Brixton Academy of Dance. In the ground-floor front. Our Bren would bang away at the piano; she played the harmonium in church, too. We’d roll back the carpet. It’s quite a lovely room, the ground-floor front – big, with a bay. We’d done it up in a Thames green Regency-stripe wallpaper. We put in a big mirror. The little girls laboured with sweat moustaches on their upper lips. One, two, three. The cats kept out in the garden, well away. One, two, three. Not good enough for Tiffany, though, not when she got to nine, ten, eleven. She wanted to do disco and funk, that kind of thing. Greek to us, of course. After our time.
She moved out into a flat with some other girls. After that, she blossomed out. She’d still come back to see her old aunties whenever she got a moment, wearing black leather and red eyeshadow and hairpieces down to her bum and God knows what. Her dad wouldn’t let her into the house done up like that, he’s a lay preacher, so she’d stop off at our place from the club where she was working, wash off her make-up, slip on flatties and a nice frock she kept in the spare room.
Correction: one of the spare rooms. This house is nothing but spare rooms, these days. Wheelchair lives in the front basement, so that she can roll her appliance in and out of the breakfast room and get to the downstairs lavvy on her own. Nor’ and I take up an attic apiece. The rest is old clothes, dust, newspapers stacked in piles tied up with string, cuttings, old photographs.
The rest is silence.
So Tiffany dropped in one fine day and who did she find taking tea with her aunties but a handsome young man she’d never seen before and who came as a bit of a shock to Nora and me, too, because he was the first Hazard child who’d ever come to visit us.
And no sooner did poor little Tiff set eyes on him than she fell.
Tristram. His twin brother is called Gareth. Bloody silly Celtic names. The other one, that Gareth, is a Jesuit, he converted in his teens. Then he went off to be a missionary, or so his Old Nanny told us. His Old Nanny drops round from time to time, friend of the family, it’s a complicated connection – she used to be Wheelchair’s Old Nanny, back in the Dark Ages, before the Flood. Then she was Wheelchair’s daughter’s Old Nanny. Then Tristram and Gareth’s Old Nanny. She is, you might say, the Hazard family’s generic Old Nanny. Indestructible old girl. We rely on her for gossip, to tell the truth. Old Nanny told us how Gareth went off to the jungle, it must have been ten years ago. He’s probably been barbecued long ago, or had his head shrunk by the Jivaro.
Gareth and Tristram, the priest and the game-show presenter. Not so different, really, I suppose. Both of them in show business. Both, in their different ways, carrying on the great tradition of the Hazard family – the willing suspension of disbelief. Both of them promise you a free gift if you play the game.
Tristram and Gareth, the offspring of our father’s third wife. Let me recapitulate. Number One: Lady Atalanta Hazard, née Lynde (a.k.a. ‘Wheelchair’). Number Two: Miss Delia Delaney, of Hollywood, USA (a.k.a. Daisy Duck). Number Three: the girl who, once upon a time, played Cordelia to our father’s Lear; marrying your Cordelia, evidently something of a Hazard family tradition. She was just twenty-one years old, in those days, and fresh out of RADA, where she had
Tiffany. So pretty! I never saw such a pretty baby. ‘Born for the stage,’ I said to Nora. We took her on, ballet and tap, from the age of three. We used to run a little school, in those days, the Brixton Academy of Dance. In the ground-floor front. Our Bren would bang away at the piano; she played the harmonium in church, too. We’d roll back the carpet. It’s quite a lovely room, the ground-floor front – big, with a bay. We’d done it up in a Thames green Regency-stripe wallpaper. We put in a big mirror. The little girls laboured with sweat moustaches on their upper lips. One, two, three. The cats kept out in the garden, well away. One, two, three. Not good enough for Tiffany, though, not when she got to nine, ten, eleven. She wanted to do disco and funk, that kind of thing. Greek to us, of course. After our time.
She moved out into a flat with some other girls. After that, she blossomed out. She’d still come back to see her old aunties whenever she got a moment, wearing black leather and red eyeshadow and hairpieces down to her bum and God knows what. Her dad wouldn’t let her into the house done up like that, he’s a lay preacher, so she’d stop off at our place from the club where she was working, wash off her make-up, slip on flatties and a nice frock she kept in the spare room.
Correction: one of the spare rooms. This house is nothing but spare rooms, these days. Wheelchair lives in the front basement, so that she can roll her appliance in and out of the breakfast room and get to the downstairs lavvy on her own. Nor’ and I take up an attic apiece. The rest is old clothes, dust, newspapers stacked in piles tied up with string, cuttings, old photographs.
The rest is silence.
So Tiffany dropped in one fine day and who did she find taking tea with her aunties but a handsome young man she’d never seen before and who came as a bit of a shock to Nora and me, too, because he was the first Hazard child who’d ever come to visit us.
And no sooner did poor little Tiff set eyes on him than she fell.
Tristram. His twin brother is called Gareth. Bloody silly Celtic names. The other one, that Gareth, is a Jesuit, he converted in his teens. Then he went off to be a missionary, or so his Old Nanny told us. His Old Nanny drops round from time to time, friend of the family, it’s a complicated connection – she used to be Wheelchair’s Old Nanny, back in the Dark Ages, before the Flood. Then she was Wheelchair’s daughter’s Old Nanny. Then Tristram and Gareth’s Old Nanny. She is, you might say, the Hazard family’s generic Old Nanny. Indestructible old girl. We rely on her for gossip, to tell the truth. Old Nanny told us how Gareth went off to the jungle, it must have been ten years ago. He’s probably been barbecued long ago, or had his head shrunk by the Jivaro.
Gareth and Tristram, the priest and the game-show presenter. Not so different, really, I suppose. Both of them in show business. Both, in their different ways, carrying on the great tradition of the Hazard family – the willing suspension of disbelief. Both of them promise you a free gift if you play the game.
Tristram and Gareth, the offspring of our father’s third wife. Let me recapitulate. Number One: Lady Atalanta Hazard, née Lynde (a.k.a. ‘Wheelchair’). Number Two: Miss Delia Delaney, of Hollywood, USA (a.k.a. Daisy Duck). Number Three: the girl who, once upon a time, played Cordelia to our father’s Lear; marrying your Cordelia, evidently something of a Hazard family tradition. She was just twenty-one years old, in those days, and fresh out of RADA, where she had
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